Islamic Spirituality:
the forgotten revolution
© Abdal-Hakim Murad
THE POVERTY OF
FANATICISM
'Blood is no
argument', as Shakespeare observed. Sadly, Muslim ranks are today swollen with
those who disagree. The World Trade Centre, yesterday's symbol of global
finance, has today become a monument to the failure of global Islam to control those
who believe that the West can be bullied intochanging its wayward ways towards
the East. There is no real excuse to hand. It is simply not enough to clamour, as
many have done, about 'chickens coming home to roost', and to protest that Washington's
acquiescence in Israeli policies of ethnic cleansing is the inevitable generator
of such hate. It is of course true - as
Shabbir Akhtar has noted - that powerlessness
can corrupt as insistently as does power. But to comprehend is not to sanction
or even to empathize. To take innocent life to achieve a goal is the hallmark of
the most extreme secular utilitarian ethic, and stands at the opposite pole of
the absolute moral constraints required by religion. There was a time, not long ago, when the
'ultras' were few, forming only a tiny wart on the face of the worldwide
attempt to revivify Islam. Sadly, we can no longer enjoy the luxury of ignoring
them. The extreme has broadened, and the middle ground, giving way, is
everywhere dislocated and confused. And this enfeeblement of the middle ground,
was what was enjoined by the Prophetic example, is in turn accelerated by the
opprobrium which the extremists bring not simply upon themselves, but upon
committed Muslims everywhere. For here, as elsewhere, the preferences of the
media work firmly against us. David Koresh could broadcast his fringe Biblical
message from Ranch Apocalypse without the image of Christianity, or even its
Adventist wing, being in any way besmirched. But when a fringe Islamic group
bombs Swedish tourists in Cairo, the muck is instantly spread over 'militant Muslims'
everywhere.
If these things go
on, the Islamic movement will cease to form an authentic summons to cultural
and spiritual renewal, and will exist as little more than a splintered array of
maniacal factions. The prospect of such an appalling and humiliating end to the
story of a religion which once surpassed all others in its capacity for
tolerating debate and dissent is now a real possibility. The entire experience
of Islamic work over the past fifteen years has been one of increasing
radicalization, driven by the perceived Hakim Murad’s Islamic Spirituality | 2
failure of the
traditional Islamic institutions and the older Muslim movements to lead the
Muslim peoples into the worthy but so far chimerical promised land of the 'Islamic
State.'
If this final
catastrophe is to be averted, the mainstream will have to regain the initiative.
But for this to happen, it must begin by confessing that the radical critique of
moderation has its force. The Islamic movement
has so far been remarkably unsuccessful. We must ask ourselves how it is
that a man like Nasser, a butcher, a failed soldier and a cynical demagogue,
could have taken over a country as pivotal as Egypt, despite the vacuity of his
beliefs, while the Muslim Brotherhood,
with its pullulating millions of members, should have failed, and failed
continuously, for six decades. The radical accusation of a failure in
methodology cannot fail to strike home in such a context of dismal and
prolonged inadequacy.
It is in this context
- startlingly, perhaps, but inescapably - that we must present our case for the
revival of the spiritual life within Islam. If it is ever to prosper, the
'Islamic revival'
must be made to see that it is in crisis, and that its mental resources are
proving insufficient to meet contemporary needs. The response to this must be grounded
in an act of collective muhasaba, of self-examination, in terms that transcend
the ideologised neo-Islam of the revivalists, and return to a more classical and
indigenously Muslim dialectic.
Symptomatic of the
disease is the fact that among all the explanations offered for the crisis of the
Islamic movement, the only authentically Muslim interpretation, namely, that
God should not be lending it His support, is conspicuously absent. It is true
that we frequently hear the Quranic verse which states that "God does not
change the condition of a people until they change the condition of their own
selves."[1] But never, it seems, is this principle intelligently grasped.
It is assumed that the sacred text is here doing no more than to enjoin
individual moral reform as a precondition for collective societal success.
Nothing could be more hazardous, however, than to measure such moral reform
against the yardstick of the fiqh without giving concern to whether the virtues
gained have been acquired through conformity (a relatively simple task), or
proceed spontaneously from a genuine realignment of the soul. The verse is
speaking of a spiritual change, specifically, a transformation of the nafs of
the believers - not a moral one. And as the Blessed Prophet never tired of
reminding us, there is little value in outward conformity to the rules unless
this conformity ismirrored and engendered by an authentically righteous
disposition of the heart. 'Noone shall enter the Garden by his works,' as he
expressed it. Meanwhile, the profoundly judgemental and works - oriented tenor
of modern revivalist Islam (we Hakim Murad’s Islamic Spirituality | 3 must shun
the problematic buzz-word 'fundamentalism'), fixated on visible
manifestations of
morality, has failed to address the underlying question of what revelation is
for. For it is theological nonsense to suggest that God's final concern is with
our ability to conform to a complex set of rules. His concern is rather that we
should be restored, through our labours and His grace, to that state of purity
and equilibrium with which we were born. The rules are a vital means to that
end, and are facilitated by it. But they do not take its place.
The Holy Qur'an Sura
13:11.
To make this point,
the Holy Quran deploys a striking metaphor. In Sura Ibrahim, verses 24 to 26,
we read: Have you not seen how God
coineth a likeness: a goodly word like a goodly tree, the root whereof is set
firm, its branch in the heaven? It bringeth forth its fruit at every time, by
the leave of its Lord. Thus doth God coin likenesses for men, that perhapsthey
may reflect. And the likeness of an evil word is that of an evil tree that hath
been torn up by the root from upon the earth, possessed of no stability.According
to the scholars of tafsir (exegesis), the reference here is to the 'words' (kalima)
of faith and unfaith. The former is illustrated as a natural growth, whose florescence
of moral and intellectual achievement is nourished by firm roots, which in turn
denote the basis of faith: the quality of the proofs one has received, and the certainty
and sound awareness of God which alone signify that one is firmly grounded in
the reality of existence. The fruits thus yielded - the palpable benefits of the religious
life - are permanent ('at every time'),
and are not man's own accomplishment, for they only come 'by the leave of its
Lord'. Thus is the sound life of faith. The contrast is then drawn with the
only alternative: kufr, which is not grounded in reality but in illusion, and
is hence 'possessed of no stability'.[2]
This passage,
reminiscent of some of the binary categorisations of human types presented
early on in Surat al-Baqara, precisely encapsulates the relationship between
faith and works, the hierarchy which exists between them, and the sustainable
balance between nourishment and fructition, between taking and giving, which
true faith must maintain.
It is against this
criterion that we must judge the quality of contemporary 'activist' styles of
faith. Is the young 'ultra', with his intense rage which can sometimes render him
liable to nervous disorders, and his fixation on a relatively narrow range of
issues Hakim Murad’s Islamic Spirituality | 4
and concerns, really
firmly rooted, and fruitful, in the sense described by this Quranic image?
Let me point to the
answer with an example drawn from my own experience.
I used to know, quite
well, a leader of the radical 'Islamic' group, the Jama'at
Islamiya, at the
Egyptian university of Assiut. His name was Hamdi. He grew a luxuriant beard,
was constantly scrubbing his teeth with his miswak, and spent his time
preaching hatred of the Coptic Christians, a number of whom were actually attacked
and beaten up as a result of his khutbas. He had hundreds of followers; in fact,
Assiut today remains a citadel of hardline, Wahhabi-style activism. The moral of the story is that some five
years after this acquaintance, providence again brought me face to face with
Shaikh Hamdi. This time, chancing to see him on a Cairo street, I almost failed
to recognise him. The beard was gone. He was in trousers and a sweater. More
astonishing still was that he was walking with a young Western girl who turned
out to be an Australian, whom, as he sheepishly explained to me, he was
intending to marry. I talked to him, and it became clear that he was no longer even
a minimally observant Muslim, no longer prayed, and that his ambition in life was
to leave Egypt, live in Australia, and make money. What was extraordinary was that
his experiences in Islamic activism had made no impression on him - he was once
again the same distracted, ordinary Egyptian youth he had been before his conversion
to 'radical Islam'.
This phenomenon,
which we might label 'salafi burnout', is a recognised feature of many modern
Muslim cultures. An initial enthusiasm, gained usually in one's early twenties,
loses steam some seven to ten years later. Prison and torture - the frequent lot
of the Islamic radical - may serve to
prolong commitment, but ultimately, a majority of these neo-Muslims relapse,
seemingly no better or worse for their experience in the cult-like universe of
the salafi mindset.
This ephemerality of
extremist activism should be as suspicious as its content. Authentic Muslim
faith is simply not supposed to be this fragile; as the Qur'an says, its root
is meant to be 'set firm'. One has to conclude that of the two trees depicted
in the Quranic image, salafi extremism resembles the second rather than the
first. After all, the Sahaba were not known for a transient commitment: their
devotion and piety remained incomparably pure until they died.
What attracts young
Muslims to this type of ephemeral but ferocious activism? One does not have to
subscribe to determinist social theories to realise the importance of Hakim
Murad’s Islamic Spirituality | 5the almost universal condition of insecurity
which Muslim societies are now experiencing. The Islamic world is passing
through a most devastating period of transition. A history of economic and
scientific change which in Europe took five hundred years, is, in the Muslim
world, being squeezed into a couple of generations. For instance, only thirty-five
years ago the capital of Saudi Arabia was a cluster of mud huts, as it had been
for thousands of years. Today's Riyadh is a hi-tech megacity of glass towers,
Coke machines, and gliding Cadillacs. This is an extreme case, but to some
extent the dislocations of modernity are common to every Muslim society, excepting,
perhaps, a handful of the most remote tribal peoples.
Such a transition
period, with its centrifugal forces which allow nothing to remain constant,
makes human beings very insecure. They look around for something to hold onto,
that will give them an identity. In our case, that something is usually Islam.
And because they are being propelled into it by this psychic sense of
insecurity, ratherthan by the more normal processes of conversion and faith,
they lack some of the natural religious virtues, which are acquired by contact
with a continuous tradition, and can never be learnt from a book.
One easily visualises
how this works. A young Arab, part of an oversized family, competing for scarce
jobs, unable to marry because he is poor, perhaps a migrant to a rapidly
expanding city, feels like a man lost in a desert without signposts. One morning
he picks up a copy of Sayyid Qutb from a newsstand, and is 'born-again' on the
spot. This is what he needed: instant certainty, a framework in which to
interpret the landscape before him, to resolve the problems and tensions of his
life, and, even more deliciously, a way of feeling superior and in control. He
joins a group, and, anxious to retain his newfound certainty, accepts the usual
proposition that all the other groups are mistaken.
This, of course, is
not how Muslim religious conversion is supposed to work. It is meant to be a
process of intellectual maturation, triggered by the presence of a very holy
person or place. Tawba, in its traditional form, yields an outlook of joy, contentment,
and a deep affection for others. The modern type of tawba, however, born of
insecurity, often makes Muslims narrow, intolerant, and exclusivist. Even more
noticeably, it produces people whose faith is, despite its apparent intensity, liable
to vanish as suddenly as it came. Deprived of real nourishment, the activist's soul
can only grow hungry and emaciated, until at last it dies. Hakim Murad’s Islamic Spirituality | 6
THE ACTIVISM WITHIN
How should we respond
to this disorder? We must begin by remembering what Islam is for. As we noted
earlier, our din is not, ultimately, a manual of rules which, when meticulously
followed, becomes a passport to paradise. Instead, it is a package of social,
intellectual and spiritual technology whose purpose is to cleanse the human heart.
In the Qur'an, the Lord says that on the Day of Judgement, nothing will be of any
use to us, except a sound heart (qalbun salim). [3] And in a famous hadith, the
Prophet, upon whom be blessings and peace, says that "Verily in the body there is a piece of
flesh. If it is sound, the body is all sound. If it is corrupt, the body is all
corrupt. Verily, it is the heart.Mindful of this commandment, under which all
the other commandments of Islam are subsumed, and which alone gives them
meaning, the Islamic scholars have worked out a science, an ilm (science), of
analysing the 'states' of the heart, and the methods of bringing it into this
condition of soundness. In the fullness of time, this science acquired the name
tasawwuf, in English 'Sufism' - a traditional label for what we might nowadays
more intelligibly call 'Islamic psychology.'
At this point, many
hackles are raised and well-rehearsed objections voiced. It is vital to
understand that mainstream Sufism is not, and never has been, a doctrinal
system, or a school of thought - a madhhab. It is, instead, a set of insights
and practices which operate within the various Islamic madhhabs; in other
words, it is not a madhhab, it is an ilm. And like most of the other Islamic
ulum, it was not known by name, or in its later developed form, in the age of
the Prophet (upon him be blessings and peace) or his Companions. This does not
make it less legitimate. There are many Islamic sciences which only took shape
many years after the Prophetic age: usul al-fiqh, for instance, or the
innumerable technical disciplines of hadith.
Now this, of course,
leads us into the often misunderstood area of sunna and bid'a, two notions
which are wielded as blunt instruments by many contemporary activists, but
which are often grossly misunderstood. The classic Orientalist thesis is of
course that Islam, as an 'arid Semitic religion', failed to incorporate
mechanisms for its own development, and that it petrified upon the death of its
founder. This, however, is a nonsense rooted in the ethnic determinism of the
nineteenth century historians who had shaped the views of the early Orientalist
synthesizers (Muir, Le Bon, Renan,
Caetani). Islam, as
the religion designed for the end of time, has in fact proved itself eminently
adaptable to the rapidly changing conditions which characterise this final and
most 'entropic' stage of history. Hakim
Murad’s Islamic Spirituality | 7What is a bid'a, according to the classical
definitions of Islamic law? We all know the
famous hadith:
Beware of matters
newly begun, for every matter newly begun is innovation, every innovation is
misguidance, and every misguidance is in Hell. [4]
Does this mean that
everything introduced into Islam that was not known to the first generation of
Muslims is to be rejected? The classical
ulema do not accept such a literalistic interpretation.
Let us take a
definition from Imam al-Shafi'i, an authority universally accepted in Sunni
Islam. Imam al-Shafi'i writes:
There are two kinds
of introduced matters (muhdathat). One is that which
contradicts a text of
the Qur'an, or the Sunna, or a report from the early Muslims (athar), or the
consensus (ijma') of the Muslims: this is an 'innovation of misguidance'
(bid'at dalala). The second kind is that which is in itself good and entails no
contradiction of any of these authorities: this is a 'non-reprehensible innovation'
(bid'a ghayr madhmuma). [5]
This basic
distinction between acceptable and unacceptable forms of bid'a is
recognised by the
overwhelming majority of classical ulema. Among some, for instance al-Izz ibn
Abd al-Salam (one of the half-dozen or so great mujtahids of Islamic history),
innovations fall under the five axiological headings of the Shari'a: the
obligatory (wajib), the recommended (mandub), the permissible (mubah), the offensive
(makruh), and the forbidden (haram).[6]
Under the category of
'obligatory innovation', Ibn Abd al-Salam gives the following examples:
recording the Qur'an and the laws of Islam in writing at a time when it was feared
that they would be lost, studying Arabic grammar in order to resolve controversies
over the Qur'an, and developing philosophical theology (kalam) to refute the
claims of the Mu'tazilites. Category two
is 'recommended innovation'. Under this heading the ulema list such activities
as building madrasas, writing books on beneficial Islamic subjects, and indepth
studies of Arabic linguistics. Category
three is 'permissible', or 'neutral innovation', including worldly activities such
as sifting flour, and constructing houses in various styles not known in
Medina. Hakim Murad’s Islamic
Spirituality | 8
Category four is the
'reprehensible innovation'. This includes such misdemeanours as overdecorating
mosques or the Qur'an.
Category five is the
'forbidden innovation'. This includes unlawful taxes, giving judgeships to
those unqualified to hold them, and sectarian beliefs and practices that explicitly
contravene the known principles of the Qur'an and the Sunna.
The above classification
of bid'a types is normal in classical Shari'a literature, being accepted by the
four schools of orthodox fiqh. There have been only two significant exceptions
to this understanding in the history of Islamic thought: the Zahiri school as
articulated by Ibn Hazm, and one wing of the Hanbali madhhab, represented by Ibn
Taymiya, who goes against the classical ijma' on this issue, and claims that
all forms of innovation, good or bad, are un-Islamic.
Why is it, then, that
so many Muslims now believe that
innovation in any form is unacceptable in Islam? One factor has already
been touched on: the mental complexes thrown up by insecurity, which incline
people to find comfort in absolutist and literalist interpretations. Another
lies in the influence of the well-financed neoHanbali madhhab called Wahhabism,
whose leaders are famous for their rejection of all possibility of
development.
In any case, armed
with this more sophisticated and classical awareness of Islam's ability to
acknowledge and assimilate novelty, we can understand how Muslim civilisation
was able so quickly to produce novel academic disciplines to deal with new
problems as these arose.
Islamic psychology is
characteristic of the new ulum which, although present in latent and implicit
form in the Quran, were first systematized in Islamic culture during the early
Abbasid period. Given the importance that the Quran attaches to obtaining a 'sound
heart', we are not surprised to find that the influence of Islamic psychology has
been massive and all-pervasive. In the formative first four centuries of Islam,
the time when the great works of tafsir, hadith, grammar, and so forth were
laid down, the ulema also applied their minds to this problem of al-qalb
al-salim. This was first visible when, following the example of the Tabi'in,
many of the early ascetics, such as Sufyan ibn Uyayna, Sufyan al-Thawri, and
Abdallah ibn al-Mubarak, had focussed their concerns explicitly on the art of
purifying the heart. The methods they recommended were frequent fasting and
night prayer, periodic retreats, and a preoccupation with murabata: service as
volunteer fighters in the border castles of
Asia Minor. Hakim Murad’s Islamic Spirituality | 9
This type of pietist
orientation was not in the least systematic during this period. It was a loose
category embracing all Muslims who sought salvation through the Prophetic
virtues of renunciation, sincerity, and deep devotion to the revelation.
These men and women
were variously referred to as al-bakka'un: 'the weepers', because of their fear
of the Day of Judgement, or as zuhhad, ascetics, or ubbad, 'unceasing
worshippers'.
By the third century,
however, we start to find writings which can be understood as belonging to a
distinct devotional school. The increasing luxury and materialism of Abbasid
urban society spurred many Muslims to campaign
for a restoration of the simplicity of the Prophetic age. Purity of heart,
compassion for others, and a constant recollection of God were the defining
features of this trend. We find references to the method of muhasaba:
self-examination to detect impurities of intention. Also stressed was riyada:
self-discipline.
By this time, too,
the main outlines of Quranic psychology had been worked out. The human
creature, it was realised, was made up of four constituent parts: the body (jism),
the mind (aql), the spirit (ruh), and the self (nafs). The first two need
little comment. Less familiar (at least to people of a modern education) are
the third and fourth categories.
The spirit is the
ruh, that underlying essence of the human individual which survives death. It
is hard to comprehend rationally, being in part of Divine inspiration, as the Quran
says:
"And they ask
you about the spirit; say, the spirit is of the command of my Lord. And you
have been given of knowledge only a little."[7]
According to the
early Islamic psychologists, the ruh is a non-material reality which pervades
the entire human body, but is centred on the heart, the qalb. It represents that
part of man which is not of this world, and which connects him with his
Creator, and which, if he is fortunate, enables him to see God in the next
world. When we are born, this ruh is intact and pure. As we are initiated into
the distractions of the world, however, it is covered over with the 'rust'
(ran) of which the Quran speaks. This rust is made up of two things: sin and
distraction. When, through the process of selfdiscipline, these are banished,
so that the worshipper is preserved from sin and is focussing entirely on the
immediate presence and reality of God, the rust is dissolved, and the ruh once
again is free. The heart is sound; and salvation, and closeness to God, are
achieved. Hakim Murad’s Islamic
Spirituality | 10
This sounds simple
enough. However, the early Muslims taught that such precious things come only
at an appropriate price. Cleaning up the Augean stables of the heart is a most
excruciating challenge. Outward conformity to the rules of religion is simple enough;
but it is only the first step. Much more demanding is the policy known as mujahada:
the daily combat against the lower self, the nafs. As the Quran says:
'As for him that
fears the standing before his Lord, and forbids his nafs its desires, for him,
Heaven shall be his place of resort.'[8]
Hence the Sufi
commandment:
'Slaughter your ego
with the knives of mujahada.' [9]
Once the nafs is
controlled, then the heart is clear, and the virtues proceed from it easily and
naturally. Because its objective is
nothing less than salvation, this vital Islamic science has been consistently
expounded by the great scholars of classical Islam. While today there are many
Muslims, influenced by either Wahhabi or Orientalist agendas, who believe that
Sufism has always led
a somewhat marginal existence in Islam, the reality is that the overwhelming
majority of the classical scholars were actively involved in Sufism. The early Shafi'i scholars of Khurasan:
al-Hakim al-Nisaburi, Ibn Furak, al-Qushayri and al-Bayhaqi, were all Sufis who
formed links in the richest academic tradition of Abbasid Islam, which
culminated in the achievement of Imam Hujjat al-Islam alGhazali. Ghazali
himself, author of some three hundred books, including the definitive rebuttals
of Arab philosophy and the Ismailis, three large textbooks of Shafi'i fiqh, the
best-known tract of usul al-fiqh, two works on logic, and several theological
treatises, also left us with the classic statement of orthodox Sufism: the Ihya
Ulum al-Din, a book of which Imam Nawawi remarked:
"Were the books
of Islam all to be lost, excepting only the Ihya', it would suffice to replace
them all." [10]
Imam Nawawi himself
wrote two books which record his debt to Sufism, one called the Bustan
al-Arifin ('Garden of the Gnostics', and another called the alMaqasid(recently
published in English translation, Sunna Books, Evanston Il. trans. Nuh Ha Mim
Keller).
Among the Malikis,
too, Sufism was popular. Al-Sawi, al-Dardir, al-Laqqani and Abd al-Wahhab
al-Baghdadi were all exponents of Sufism. The Maliki jurist of Cairo, Abd al-Wahhab
al-Sha'rani defines Sufism as follows:
Hakim Murad’s Islamic Spirituality | 11
'The path of the
Sufis is built on the Quran and the Sunna, and is based on living according to
the morals of the prophets and the purified ones. It may not be blamed, unless
it violates an explicit statement from the Quran, sunna, or ijma. If it does
not contravene any of these sources, then no pretext remains for condemning it, except one's own
low opinion of others, or interpreting what they do as ostentation, which is unlawful.
No-one denies the states of the Sufis except someone ignorant of the way they
are.'[11]
For Hanbali Sufism
one has to look no further than the revered figures of Abdallah Ansari, Abd
al-Qadir al-Jilani, Ibn al-Jawzi, and Ibn Rajab. In fact, virtually all the great luminaries
of medieval Islam: al-Suyuti, Ibn Hajar alAsqalani, al-Ayni, Ibn Khaldun,
al-Subki, Ibn Hajar al-Haytami; tafsir writers like Baydawi, al-Sawi,
Abu'l-Su'ud, al-Baghawi, and Ibn Kathir[12] ; aqida writers such as Taftazani,
al-Nasafi, al-Razi: all wrote in support of Sufism. Many, indeed, composed independent
works of Sufi inspiration. The ulema of the great dynasties of Islamic history,
including the Ottomans and the Moghuls, were deeply infused with the Sufi outlook,
regarding it as one of the most central and indispensable of Islamic sciences.
Further confirmation
of the Islamic legitimacy of Sufism is supplied by the enthusiasm of its
exponents for carrying Islam beyond the boundaries of the Islamic world. The
Islamization process in India, Black Africa, and South-East Asia was carried
out largely at the hands of wandering Sufi teachers. Likewise, the Islamic obligation
of jihad has been borne with especial zeal by the Sufi orders. All the great nineteenth
century jihadists: Uthman dan Fodio (Hausaland), al-Sanousi (Libya),
Abd al-Qadir
al-Jaza'iri (Algeria), Imam Shamil (Daghestan) and the leaders of the Padre
Rebellion (Sumatra) were active practitioners of Sufism, writing extensively on
it while on their campaigns. Nothing is further from reality, in fact, than the
claim hat Sufism represents a quietist and non-militant form of Islam.
With all this, we
confront a paradox. Why is it, if Sufism has been so respected a part of Muslim
intellectual and political life throughout our history, that there are, nowadays,
angry voices raised against it? There are two fundamental reasons here.
Firstly, there is
again the pervasive influence of Orientalist scholarship, which, at least
before 1922 when Massignon wrote his Essai sur les origines de la lexique technique,
was of the opinion that something so fertile and profound as Sufism could never
have grown from the essentially 'barren and legalistic' soil of Islam.
Orientalist works translated into Muslim languages were influential upon key
Muslim Hakim Murad’s Islamic Spirituality | 12
modernists - such as
Muhammad Abduh in his later writings - who began to questionthe centrality, or
even the legitimacy, of Sufi discourse in Islam. Secondly, there is the emergence of the
Wahhabi da'wa. When Muhammad ibn Abd al-Wahhab, some two hundred years ago,
teamed up with the Saudi tribe and attacked the neighbouring clans, he was
doing so under the sign of an essentially neoKharijite version of Islam.
Although he invoked Ibn Taymiya, he had reservations even about him. For Ibn
Taymiya himself, although critical of the excesses of certain Sufi groups, had
been committed to a branch of mainstream Sufism. This is clear, for instance,
in Ibn Taymiya's work Sharh Futuh al-Ghayb, a commentary on some echnical
points in the Revelations of the Unseen, a key work by the sixth-century saint
of Baghdad, Abd al-Qadir al-Jilani. Throughout the work Ibn Taymiya shows himself
to be a loyal disciple of al-Jilani, whom he always refers to as shaykhuna
('our teacher'). This Qadiri affiliation is confirmed in the later literature of
the Qadiri tariqa, which records Ibn Taymiya as a key link in the silsila, the
chain of transmission of Qadiri teachings.[13]
Ibn Abd al-Wahhab,
however, went far beyond this. Raised in the wastelands of Najd in Central
Arabia, he had little access to mainstream Muslim scholarship. In fact, when
his da'wa appeared and became notorious, the scholars and muftis of the day applied
to it the famous Hadith of Najd:
Ibn Umar reported the
Prophet (upon whom be blessings and peace) as saying: "Oh God, bless us in
our Syria; O God, bless us in our Yemen." Those present said: "And in
our Najd, O Messenger of God!" but he said, "O God, bless us in our
Syria; O God, bless us in our Yemen." Those present said, "And in our
Najd, O Messenger of God!".
Ibn Umar said that he
thought that he said on the third occasion: "Earthquakes and dissensions
(fitna) are there, and there shall arise the horn of the devil."[14]
And it is significant
that almost uniquely among the lands of Islam, Najd has never produced scholars
of any repute.
The Najd-based da'wa
of the Wahhabis, however, began to be
heard more loudly following the explosion of Saudi oil wealth. Many, even most,
Islamic publishing houses in Cairo and Beirut are now subsidised by Wahhabi
organisations, which prevent them from publishing traditional works on Sufism,
and remove passages in other works considered unacceptable to Wahhabist
doctrine.
The neo-Kharijite
nature of Wahhabism makes it intolerant of all other forms of Islamic
expression. However, because it has no coherent fiqh of its own - it rejects
the Hakim Murad’s Islamic Spirituality | 13orthodox madhhabs - and has only the most basic and primitively
anthropomorphic aqida, it has a fluid, amoebalike tendency to produce divisions
and subdivisions among those who profess it. No longer are the Islamic groups
essentially united by a consistent madhhab and the Ash'ari [or Maturidi] aqida.
Instead, they are all trying to derive the shari'a and the aqida from the Quran
and the Sunna by themselves. The result is the appalling state of division and
conflict which disfigures the modern salafi condition.
At this critical
moment in our history, the umma has only one realistic hope for survival, and
that is to restore the 'middle way', defined by that sophisticated classical consensus
which was worked out over painful centuries of debate and scholarship. That
consensus alone has the demonstrable ability to provide a basis for unity. But
it can only be retrieved when we improve the state of our hearts, and fill them
with the Islamic virtues of affection, respect, tolerance and reconciliation.
This inner reform,
which is the
traditional competence of Sufism, is a precondition for the restoration of unity
in the Islamic movement. The alternative is likely to be continued, and agonising,
failure.
NOTES
1. Sura 13:11.
2. For a further
analysis of this passage, see Habib Ahmad Mashhur al-Haddad, Key to the Garden
(Quilliam Press, London 1990 CE), 78-81.
3. Sura 26:89. The
archetype is Abrahamic: see Sura 37:84.
4. This hadith is in
fact an instance of takhsis al-amm: a frequent procedure of usul al-fiqh by which
an apparently unqualified statement is qualified to avoid the contradiction of
another necessary principle. See Ahmad ibn Naqib al-Misri, Reliance of the
Traveller, tr. Nuh Ha Mim Keller (Abu Dhabi, 1991 CE), 907-8 for some further
examples.
5. Ibn Asakir, Tabyin
Kadhib al-Muftari (Damascus, 1347), 97.
6. Cited in Muhammad
al-Jurdani, al-Jawahir al-lu'lu'iyya fi sharh al-Arba'in alNawawiya (Damascus,
1328), 220-1.
7. 17:85.
8. 79:40.Hakim
Murad’s Islamic Spirituality | 14
9. al-Qushayri,
al-Risala (Cairo, n.d.), I, 393.
10. al-Zabidi, Ithaf
al-sada al-muttaqin (Cairo, 1311), I, 27.
11. Sha'rani,
al-Tabaqat al-Kubra (Cairo, 1374), I, 4.
12. It is true that
Ibn Kathir in his Bidaya is critical of some later Sufis. Nonetheless, in his
Mawlid, which he asked his pupils to recite on the occasion of the Blessed
Prophet's birthday each year, he makes his personal debt to a conservative and
sober Sufism quite clear.
13. See G. Makdisi's
article 'Ibn Taymiyya: A Sufi of the Qadiriya Order' in the American Journal of
Arabic Studies,a 1973.
14. Narrated by
Bukhari. The translation is from J. Robson, Mishkat al-Masabih (Lahore, 1970),
II, 1380.
